Ancient Chilean Mummies Illuminate How Smallpox Reached the Americas
New DNA analysis of two late 15th–early 17th‑century Chilean mummies uncovered a lost variola (smallpox) strain, providing the first molecular evidence that Europeans carried smallpox to the Americas during colonization and revealing how the virus evolved when Indigenous populations had little immunity; the study also notes how vaccination by Jenner eventually slowed the virus, contributing to its global eradication.